


crazy is perfect

by statusquo_ergo



Series: it's not pain, it's just uncertainty [7]
Category: Suits (US TV)
Genre: Fluff, M/M, Meet-Cute, Tumblr Prompt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-25
Updated: 2018-05-25
Packaged: 2019-05-13 17:39:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,329
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14753351
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/statusquo_ergo/pseuds/statusquo_ergo
Summary: One little change can make a pretty big difference.





	crazy is perfect

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: Okay so prompt, we all know that in a flashback Marvey almost met. That one moment where Mike was eating in that stand with Trevor and he mocks the dude in a suit who happens to be Harvey. I just, well what if he and Harvey met that day. You know, he and Trevor happens to be eating in that stand and Harvey appears cos he is hungry and just needs to grab a bite and eats there too, and well, Marvey sparks fly!!! I always love the idea that a change in even the small moments could have led to drastic change to their relationship.
> 
> Thanks, [felicity-smoak-is-my-goddess](http://felicity-smoak-is-my-goddess.tumblr.com/), I hope this is...at least kind of what you were looking for!
> 
> Also written as part of the “Back Where You Belong” Marvey event for the episode “Rewind” (s02e08).

At the corner of fifty-third and eighth, Mike hops off his bike and walks it to the middle of the block where Trevor waits by an odorous food truck, looking only mildly more out of place in his cheap navy suit and spit-polished black shoes than Mike in his dirty chinos and fingerless gloves. Fishing his wallet out of his pocket, Mike starts counting the moments before Trevor asks him to spot him a ten, “Just this once, man, I promise I’ll pay you back as soon as the business takes off.”

Nine seconds; feels like a new record. Rolling his eyes, Mike hands the vendor a twenty for two identical falafel sandwiches, passing one to Trevor and immediately beginning to pick the peppers out of the other.

“Pickles,” Trevor says, arching his eyebrows.

“Peppers,” Mike replies, pinching the offending vegetable between his thumb and forefinger.

“Here you go.”

Mike nods as he accepts Trevor’s castoffs, dropping his own into Trevor’s sandwich and popping one of the pickled radishes into his mouth.

“Oh, yeah,” he says curiously, “that girl Nikki called me.”

“Oh,” Trevor says, “that’s awesome.”

Mike hums. “I don’t even know how she got my number,” he puzzles. “It’s _weird._ ”

“I do,” Trevor says smugly, as though Mike hasn’t already figured as much. “I asked her out. She wanted your number instead.”

The minor boost to his ego at being Nikki’s first choice doesn’t quite offset his irritation at Trevor’s impudence in setting him up; Mike glares coldly, and Trevor pulls his shoulders back and raises his sandwich in front of his chest. “I didn’t tell her about the Curious George thing,” he defends. “What?”

“I don’t know,” Mike evades, “it’s just I felt like I kind of hit it off more with that Jenny girl, that’s all.”

Not that he was particularly interested in either of them, to be perfectly honest; it’s true that he and Jenny had more of a spark, or so he thought at the time, but it’s not as though they have a future together or anything. She’s a nice girl, and he wouldn’t mind seeing her again, but there’s probably something to be drawn from the fact that he just referred to her as “that Jenny girl.”

“The blonde?” Trevor recalls gradually. “She’s not even as hot.”

Mike shrugs. “I liked her better.”

“Well,” he says smugly, “you can’t do anything now. Girls have rules about that kind of shit.”

“Are you—” Mike falters. “Is this a snake? Are you snaking my girl right now?”

She is, of course, not remotely his girl, and he has no right to be territorial over her, but he and Trevor have these easy patterns, and it’s only two thirty but it’s already been a long day, and he doesn’t feel like making it much longer by shaking them out of their comfort zone.

“Oh,” Trevor teases, “I already did.”

Mike smirks. “You called her?”

“Of course I did.”

Of course he did. It’s the expected thing, and in his shoes, Mike can’t say he wouldn’t have done the same.

“What a dick,” he mutters anyway. “Son of a bitch.”

“What?” Trevor asks, falsely aghast. “I don’t have rules against that shit.”

He wouldn’t, would he.

“Okay,” Mike says distractedly as his mind begins to wander. “Ah, whatever. That Nikki girl’s pretty hot, too.”

“Yeah,” Trevor consoles, smiling and taking a bite of his sandwich with extra peppers. Mike contemplates rolling his eyes, but it hardly seems worth the trouble; instead, he and Trevor commence spying on the pedestrians moving around them as they continue eating, hoping nobody notices their sly glances and quietly bored judgments. There’s hardly anyone worth giving a second glance; one guy in a bright blue polo shirt has his hair tied in a messy bun that Mike tries to think of some way to comment on, but he’s gone before anything clever comes to mind.

“So what’s good?”

Jarred from his deliberations by a fairly rich voice he doesn’t recognize, Mike leans around the side of the truck to get a good look at the intruder.

Would you get a load of _this._

A confident-looking guy about Mike’s height but with better posture stands in front of the truck’s open window, perusing the pictographic menu with his lips slightly pursed, his hands slipped into the pockets of his extremely well-cut grey suit and a full manila envelope stuffed under his arm. The whole ensemble gives a pretty strong impression that he’d rather be eating at a five-star restaurant than on a dirty street corner; Mike wonders if he lost some kind of bet.

“Gotta give it up for the classics,” Mike says, gesturing vaguely with his falafel. The guy nods, keeping his eyes on the menu and squinting against the sunlight shining in his eyes, and Mike belatedly realizes that he was probably talking to the vendor.

“Gotta go to a place I can get a shot and a beer,” the guy murmurs.

Like Mike’s not going to run with that.

“Too many fuckin’ pancakes?” he asks smugly, his confidence somehow falling and rising simultaneously when the guy turns to him with his eyebrows raised.

“Damn straight,” he says after a moment, and Mike grins.

“Seriously dude,” he says, “you can’t go wrong with a falafel.”

Narrowing his eyes, the guy flattens his lips and sighs out through his nose. “Don’t call me ‘dude,’” he intones with a strong undercurrent of I’m-already-regretting-talking-to-this-nine-year-old.

Mike raises his free hand. “Pardon me, your excellency, sir.”

The guy smirks. “Close.” Pausing only briefly, he takes one hand out of his pocket and extends it in Mike’s direction. “Harvey Specter.”

Mildly bewildered, Mike steps forward to accept the proffered shake. “Mike,” he says. “Mike Ross.”

Harvey nods. “Pleasure.”

For some reason, even though he doesn’t actually know this Specter guy, nor does he have any reason to try to impress him, Mike is inordinately ashamed of his scruffy appearance, the sunglasses perched on his head and the seatbelt-strap bag slung across his chest. Sticking his hands in his back pockets, he scuffs his heel along the sidewalk as Trevor, his mouth full of lettuce and ground chickpeas, strolls around the cart to see what the fucking holdup is.

Taking a good two seconds to look Harvey up and down, he jabs his elbow into Mike’s side and swallows audibly as Harvey watches in mild disgust.

“So you gonna call Nikki or what?” Trevor asks loudly.

Mike winces at the obvious out. He didn’t especially want to call Nikki before he started talking to Harvey, before he even knew his name, and now that they’ve got a rapport going, sort of, the idea is somehow even less appealing.

“Nah, man,” he replies with a bit of an edge, “you should go for it.”

Shrugging his shoulders almost imperceptibly, Trevor jerks his eyebrows in an unsubtle question, and Mike hopes he’s angled away from Harvey sufficiently that he won’t notice the pointed glare he fires in Trevor’s direction.

Eventually, Trevor takes the hint and leans away. “Alright,” he hedges, “I’ll let you know how it goes.”

“Yeah,” Mike says. “Thanks.”

Sparing Harvey one last speculative glance, Trevor directs his attention toward his sandwich, waving it weakly in front of his chest. “I gotta get back to the office,” he says. “See you tonight.”

“Yeah, see you.”

Then he goes, finally, and Mike turns back to Harvey with an apologetic grimace as Harvey manages to cock only one of his eyebrows.

“‘Tonight’?” he parrots.

Mike jerks his thumb back over his shoulder in the direction of Trevor’s departure. “Roommate,” he explains as Harvey nods skeptically.

“Those his dress polyesters?”

Trying to conceal his snort of laughter, Mike claps his hand down over his mouth, but Harvey only smiles and bites down on a little laugh of his own.

“He’s an entrepreneur,” Mike answers Harvey’s obvious contempt. “A lot of things in the works.”

“So he can’t commit to anything,” Harvey summarizes, and Mike doesn’t want to take it suggestively, he really doesn’t, because that’s not how Harvey means it, and he’d like to be respectful of this attractive and obviously successful guy he just met. Fortunately, Harvey doesn’t seem interested in pursuing the subject of Trevor, shaking his head and focusing his attentions back on Mike.

“So I’m guessing you two aren’t in business together,” he says. “Either that, or he’s really fucking you over.”

Mike is being _respectful,_ god dammit.

“I’m a bike messenger,” he says, sticking his thumb under the strap of his messenger backpack and doing an admirable job, thank you very much, of keeping his composure intact.

“Aspirational,” Harvey says wryly, and Mike almost takes offense but for the expectant look in Harvey’s eye, like he’s waiting for a comeback, except how’s he supposed to mount a defense against the truth like that?

“At least I passed the Bar,” Mike blurts out.

Yeah, that was smooth.

Well, he consoles himself, it’s true, so that’s…something. Harvey even looks impressed, or at the very least, surprised.

“So what’s keeping you out of the office?” he asks, seemingly with genuine interest. “You’d miss the fresh air too much?”

“Proximity to gasoline and dryer rooms, that’s gotta be it,” Mike agrees as he contemplates how much of his life story to divulge to this relative stranger. Harvey’s anticipation doesn’t lessen in any visible way, though, so Mike figures he might be expecting an actual answer.

“I don’t have my JD,” he admits, which ought to be explanation enough for his lack of prosecutorial employment, but if anything, Harvey only seems startled, his eyes widening just slightly despite the sun’s glare still hitting him from the right.

“Flunked out?” he guesses.

“Never went,” Mike corrects, and if he thought Harvey was surprised before, it’s nothing to the baffled expression on his face now.

“How the hell did you pass the Bar without going to law school?” he blusters. Mike shrugs.

“I like to read,” he says. “Once I read something, I understand it, and once I understand it, I never forget it.”

Harvey pinches his lips together thoughtfully and nods. “Eidetic memory?”  


Mike shrugs again, preparing for the inevitable quiz on some obscure book he may or may not have ever heard of, much less read.

“So why take the Bar?” Harvey asks instead. Mike blinks a couple of times and stands up a little straighter.

“This dickhead bet me I couldn’t pass it without going to law school,” he says, to Harvey’s apparent amusement.

“You forked over two hundred and fifty bucks and sat a thousand-question exam just to prove some dickhead wrong?”

“It was a matter of honor!”

“And you had to prove it.”

“ _And_ they called me chicken.”

Harvey laughs, rocking back on his heels, and Mike shifts the backpack strap slung across his chest with a childish grin.

“Actually,” he fesses up as Harvey’s laughter dies down, “I’ve always wanted to be a lawyer, but, you know. Life.”

Harvey nods sympathetically, and Mike wonders if there’s any way in the world that this glamorous guy might’ve come from the same sort of humble upbringing Mike is still trying to recover from. The sort of upbringing that makes him stop by the local food cart for lunch instead of an exclusive dining club.

“Money trouble?” Harvey asks indelicately. Mike clears his throat.

“Among other things.”

He’s already given up quite enough for a first encounter, he decides. Thankfully, Harvey has the tact not to press for the gruesome details, and Mike affords him a lopsided smile.

“But we play with the cards we’re dealt, right?”

Harvey frowns mightily at that, and Mike falters, wondering what he could’ve done that was so offensive despite having said so little. Then Harvey shuffles the envelope under his arm to reach into his breast pocket, producing what has to be a business card, and now this is just confusing.

“Alright, hotshot,” he says thoughtfully, pinching the card between his index and middle fingers and holding it out like, frankly, a slick city lawyer. “I’m a junior partner as Pearson Hardman. I think you and I should keep in touch.”

Pearson Hardman? Wow, this guy is legit. Accepting the card as though he fears it’s about to shatter, Mike inspects the glossy print; there’s Harvey’s name, his title, his office number. Pearson Hardman’s brand printed across the top in small caps.

“Is your personal number written on the back?” he says flippantly as he slides the card into his wallet.

“Would you like it to be?”

Say what now?

Mike’s mouth quite literally drops open at the easy retort, but Harvey only arches his eyebrows.

“I think you’re capable of a lot more than you’re doing right now,” Harvey says. “Give me a call when you’re ready to talk about making that a reality.”

“I…” Mike takes the card back out of his wallet to stare at it again. “I will, thanks.”

Harvey nods and begins to walk off; he doesn’t make it very far before he stops again, looking back over his shoulder.

“And Mike?”

“Yeah,” Mike says immediately. Harvey smirks.

“Sorry I spoiled your lunch break.”

Mike looks down at the forgotten falafel still clutched in his hand, the filling spilled out into the foil and the sandwich effect generally ruined.

“It’s okay.”

“Still,” Harvey insists, “let me make it up to you sometime.”

Hoping not to look quite as flustered as he feels, Mike nods awkwardly.

“Yeah,” he says, “I… I’ll call you.”

“Looking forward to it.”

Then Harvey disappears around the corner and Mike is left standing alone with the remains of his lunch, three more deliveries to make before five o’clock, and the strangest sense that his life has just taken a turn for the absolutely batshit crazy.

Feeling the weight of his wallet in his back pocket, he tips his chin down to hide a heady little smile.

His life is pretty fucking awesome.

**Author's Note:**

> So obviously there’s no way to pinpoint _exactly_ where Mike and Harvey’s forgotten first meeting took place, since it was filmed in Toronto, but what is inarguable is that Mike and Trevor are across the street from a 7-11, and while the façade isn’t the same, there is actually a 7-11 at 53rd and 8th, which is…admittedly in the Theater District, but the area still looks at least a _little_ business-y, and it’s close enough to Person Hardman (53rd and Lexington) that Harvey might conceivably be walking around rather than being driven (especially since he’s not yet a senior partner).
> 
> Patrick J. Adams and Gabriel Macht are both six feet tall.
> 
> The opening dialogue is lifted from “[Rewind](https://www.springfieldspringfield.co.uk/view_episode_scripts.php?tv-show=suits&episode=s02e08)” (s02e08), and snatches of dialogue in Mike and Harvey’s conversation are lifted from “[Pilot](https://www.springfieldspringfield.co.uk/view_episode_scripts.php?tv-show=suits&episode=s01e01)” (s01e01).
> 
> “We stop at pancake house.”  
> “What’re you nuts, we had pancakes for breakfast. Gotta go to a place where I can get a shot and a beer, steak, maybe, not more fuckin’ pancakes, c’mon.”  
> —Gaear Grimsrud and Carl Showalter, _Fargo_ (1996)
> 
> “Suppose you had to do something, you had to go someplace and do this thing that was, you knew it was very dangerous, but it was a matter of honor. And you had to prove it. What would you do?”  
> —Jim, _Rebel Without a Cause_ (1955)
> 
> “Dad, I said it was a matter of honor, remember? They called me chicken. You know? Chicken? I had to go. Cause, I didn’t I’d never be able to face those kids again.”  
> —Jim, _Rebel Without a Cause_ (1955)
> 
> Title from “Hey 3 / Perfect for You (Reprise)” from _Next to Normal_ (2008).


End file.
